Relegated to the background and sometimes mocked for his lack of accuracy in Paris, the Cameroonian striker will be one of the main Bavarian threats on Wednesday during the round of 16 second leg of C1.
16 goals in 25 games. Bayern Munich’s top scorer this season is neither Sadio Mané nor Kingsley Coman or Thomas Müller, but Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting. The striker, who will turn 34 in two weeks, took advantage of the absences of some of his teammates to become one of the most dangerous weapons of a team known for its firepower. As in the first leg, which he started with a bang, “Choupo” will be closely observed in the knockout round of the Champions League against his former team on Wednesday March 8.
The departure of Robert Lewandowski last summer was to leave a big void. To fill it, at least in part, the Pole, who averaged 43 goals per season in Bavarian colors, was replaced by Sadio Mané. But the Senegalese failed to keep pace at the start of the season (six goals in 16 Bundesliga games). He was shifted to the left wing, then seriously injured his fibula, missing the World Cup and the round of 16 first leg. Choupo-Moting took full advantage of this.
One year more
“I’m very happy with Choupo’s performance. I have the feeling that he feels good in the team. He’s one of our best players at the moment”, praised his coach Julian Nagelsmann in November. According to his satisfactory performances, the Cameroonian international has changed status. “When you have a striker who has been scoring as many goals as he has lately, it makes sense to keep him at the club,” endorsed Nagelsmann in January. Two months later, the one who has just scored in his club’s last three games since the first leg (Mönchengladbach, Union Berlin and Stuttgart), saw his contract – which was to end at the end of the season – be extended until in June 2024.
In Bavaria, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting ceased to be an interim striker, a label that was stuck on him when he signed up to everyone’s surprise with PSG in the last hours of the summer transfer window in 2018. At the time, “Choupo” was arriving for the first time at a top club. He was coming out of an average season with Stoke City (five goals in 30 Premier League games), which ended in relegation to the English second division. At 29, after ten seasons with the pros, he had only participated in one edition of the Champions League, with Schalke 04 in 2014/15 (one goal in eight games).
Behind Edinson Cavani, Kylian Mbappé, Neymar and Angel Di Maria (then Mauro Icardi), it was impossible to play the leading roles and the crumbs were rare. In two seasons in the capital, Choupo-Moting was only entitled to bits of matches and his rare tenure only served to compensate for the absence of executives left to rest during meetings far from being crucial. However, if he only scored nine goals in 51 appearances, “Choupo” quickly enjoyed a good popularity rating at the Parc des Princes thanks to his involvement on the field.
Bitter farewells to Paris
Sometimes rough, the latter has sometimes had to face the mockery of observers, especially in April 2019 against Strasbourg, when he stopped the ball on the opposing goal line as he was going to cross it. Less and less used by Thomas Tuchel from 2020, “Choupo” almost did not play in the Final 8 of the Champions League in Lisbon, his contract expiring in June. But instead of going out the back door, he had agreed to extend the adventure for a few weeks and played a key role by scoring the winning goal against Atalanta Bergamo in the round of 16 (2-1), before the defeat in the final against Bayern Munich, precisely.
It was only a month and a half after this painful failure that the player who passed through Hamburg, Nuremberg, Mainz and Schalke decided to return to the Bundesliga, signing with the Bavarian executioner despite the extension offered by PSG. “With what he did, Maxim deserved to be taken a little more seriously [par le PSG]. But we did not feel more recognition in the club’s proposal. To stay was to take the risk of being removed from the list (of the Champions League), of hearing that he was there by chance, for his human qualities… In Germany, we don’t boil it down to That”had very little appreciated his father and manager, Just Choupo-Moting, in the columns of Parisian in April 2021. If there is still a little bitterness, the revenge will be complete if Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting scores and eliminates his former club on Wednesday.